I hadn’t thought of her in months, at least not for longer than it took to shove her right back out of mind, but now she filled my head. Her dark-honey hair, her gentle mouth, her slim body. Her wide brown eyes, always so admiring when they looked at me. Her sweet voice, when she chattered on and on about laundry and the market and the day’s baking…

Hell’s gates, she was beautiful, but she’d bored me.

I wondered if she’d had the baby yet. My child. It was six months since I’d last seen her. She might be swelled up like a melon, or maybe she’d have something small and screaming on the breast. Or maybe she’d seen sense and done something to empty her belly out before it got big at all.

Hadn’t I told Demetra I’d marry her when I came back?

I groaned aloud but kicked my feet into moving. Baby or no, I wasn’t getting married. Just because I’d gotten burned by a scheming patrician snake of a girl didn’t mean I was going to run right back to Demetra. I’d pay her a visit, take a dutiful look at the baby, leave her some money—maybe get a bounce in bed for old times’ sake…

The street looked no different than it had when I’d left. More riotous, with soldiers drinking or dicing or swaggering past every third door, but the same. I pulled my lion pelt back out of my pack and draped it over one arm. Demetra wouldn’t want to hear war stories, but she’d be impressed I made aquilifer. Her eyes would shine admiringly. Sabina never looked at me like that—she just looked at me like she knew me, right down to my bones, and that had been damned uncomfortable sometimes.

I didn’t want to think about Sabina.

“Who are you?”

I blinked at the face that answered my dutiful knock at the door of the bakehouse. An old woman’s face, thin and sour. “I’m looking for Demetra?”

“Never heard of her,” the old woman snapped. “No trollops here for soldiers, you be on your way!”

I jammed my foot in the door. “The girl who lived over the bakeshop—a Bithynian girl? Long blond hair?”

“That one died last week when she birthed,” the woman said. “Woman across took the child.”

She kicked my foot aside and slammed the door. I stared at the panels just inches from my nose, stunned.

“Aquilifer, fancy a drink?” a drunken voice shouted from a passing party of legionaries. “Heard you killed the Dacian king; is it true he had horns?”